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About me

Hi!

My name is Thomas Högqvist, I was born in the most southern part of Sweden in 1975. I live in Malmö – Sweden with my wife and son, still in southern Sweden and about 100 kilometers from where I was born.

I work as a technical recovery and repair engineer and project manager for a company called Arepa Sverige AB. That title means everything, and nothing! 🙂 Basically we do repairs to industries after they suffered from fire, flooding, contamination or other major accidents or failures. I travel a lot, mainly northern Europe, but I can end up anywhere really.

So my car interest then? Maybe I should say vehicle instead! I love almost anything that moves. I’ve been (I have to say been, because I don’t have a bike at the moment) motorcycling for years. When I was young it was mopeds, bicycles (I recently picked up mountain biking again), skateboard, whatever with wheels.

I, of course have a father who’s the same, so I got bitten as a child. My dad had a small service shop when I was a kid, so I grew up with tools and fixing cars. And really, cars are my thing. As much as I love riding a bike, nothing beats the car with me.

I’m not too keen on newer cars though. Maybe I’m getting old, maybe it’s just who I am. I don’t really care for anything newer than late 90’s. There are exceptions (Mercedes C63 AMG Estate for example), of course, but mainly that’s the limit of “newety” for me. I often drive new rentals of different kind, I even own a to me new car, the fantastically inspiring 2004 Toyota Avensis Estate. But it’s just cheap and reliable transportation, not soul. Too much electronics (and I’ve been working in IT for 10 years and more…). New cars just feels, well, too digital in everything. You don’t really hear the engine, the road handling is super stiff even in a family sedan. And all these gadgets! They’re nice and all, but I couldn’t get the cruise control to work in my last rental, a Volvo V60. The buttons where there on the wheel, but it’s so many functions that you really need to read the manual to figure it out.

So, older cars are what I care about. I really like the 80’s and 90’s era, and that probably has to do with my age. It was the time when I grew up dreaming about cars. Also I like that many of the cars from that age have a combination of safety, drivability and modernity so that they are useful in today’s traffic. That really appeals to me, to be able to drive my enthusiast car everywhere.

I also love the 60’s and 70’s cars of any kind. So much quirky ideas, funny names, strange solutions and everything wrapped with some fun around it. Just take a look in any car brochure of that age. I have a 70’s Jaguar brochure with interior pictures. What’s in the picture? A pretty lady (of course) and a tall glass of what looks like a Long Island Iced Tea on the armrest! If anybody would do that today, … oh wait, that’s so hypothetical that I can’t even finish the sentence.

Otherwise I love Mopar’s and muscle cars in general, haven’t owned one yet, but that’s happening someday. Sweden have a really big US car crowd, and there’s a lot of nice cars to buy. I’ve owned Alfas (75’s, 164’s, 33’s) Jaguars (my very first car was a 1975 XJ6 4.2 litre), and many more fun and not so fun (1987 Mazda 626…) cars over the years.

But then I got hooked on Benzes, and how that happened you can read about here. And in particular the W124, of which I’ve had a few, which I’ll tell about in a not yet written post.

Well, I think that covers it really, thanks for reading!

/Thomas

TL;DR: I love cars from the 60’s through the 90’s. I don’t like new cars, because they’re digital.